


idle chatter

by cellardweller



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Language, Post-Recall, a lot of headcanons crammed in here, a lot of touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 13:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13249290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cellardweller/pseuds/cellardweller
Summary: An EMP blast takes out Genji's systems and they have some time before help arrives.





	idle chatter

**Author's Note:**

> something semi-fluffy, a very loose tie-in to an eventual scene in my Reaper fic How to Boil Water 
> 
> also I don't know how cyborgs work but enjoy

There’s a flareup of bright light nearby, a flash of energy before the whole stage goes dark again. Nearabout where Genji was headed, he thinks, as he chews around his cigar and rises from his post, feeling somewhat like a radio being tuned. The hair on the back of his neck stands up with the rest of him.  
  
He feels a twitch in his prosthesis, malfunctioning for barely a moment before returning to normal. It’s only after a brief inspection that he notices the dampener’s burned out. Still works like an arm, though, he thinks as he curls the fingers. He tucks it under his serape as he runs.  
  
When he comes up on the scene it’s a moment too late to be fashionable. Agents in black advance on Genji, who stumbles and crawls as his joints give out, green sparks erupting from his suit like arcs of lightning. There’s an awful stuttering moan like a song skipping, and McCree realizes it’s coming from Genji himself as he struggles across the moonlit tarmac. A sinkhole opens up in McCree’s stomach as he stalks along the edge of his elevated platform, getting a wide-open view of his targets. The urge to jump down and run through them like a bull is almost too strong to resist, but he’s gotta be smart about this.  
  
“Oh well,” he mutters, “Would have rather done this the easy way.” He picks the stub from his mouth and puts it out against his chest armor. Peacekeeper’s a fine weight in his hand, comforting as he takes aim and drapes his other hand against the hammer. From his spot up high he can see six agents in the sparsely stocked cargo chamber all lingering towards the cyborg, sees no others, could be more hiding off like rats. He notices the twitch in Genji’s real hand under the armor, so he’s alive, at least. Good. Time to make a bold statement.  
  
This is always the hard part.  
  
There’s not quite a way to describe it that doesn’t sound fucking crazy, but time slows down. A low roar fills his ears, washes over him like the cold wind from the hole in the reinforced doors. Snow’s coming in, falling over the blacktop like a gush of white blood.  
  
Every living soul waits behind ghostly crosshairs, waits for him to pull the trigger like he’s the hand of the Almighty himself. They’re bathed in a stark red – except for Genji. His deadeye apparently holds frequent conversations with his soul, obscuring Genji in shades of gray that puts him out of sight. McCree focuses in, breath stilled as he narrows his eyes and finds the spots all his bullets are going to go through – some through the heart, some through the skull, all fatal.  
  
He fans the hammer one second, the next second he hears the sound of six distinct bodies falling to the ground.  
  
He pitches back a step with a hardened growl, doubling over as he tries to stem the flow of blood from his right eye. It’s dripping through his fingers when he looks up, blinking away the mess to see Genji still and silent on the ground, but untouched. He paws at his eye, smearing blood over his face in the process, as he climbs down to the ground floor. “Genji.” It’s low in the back of his throat as he sprints, all the training in the world just barely stopping him from yelling out his name across the twenty-yard stretch. “Genji, Genji, Genji.”  
  
From close up, the rise and fall of Genji’s chest is more noticeable, as shallow as it is. McCree drops to his knees next to him and hesitates. He checks their surroundings quickly, nothing but the howl of cold wind and the bodies of six old friends, hovers over Genji once more. This body is so new to him, modernized and streamlined from the old days. It makes him look, of all things, younger. His hands find their old haunts on instinct and slide from the edges of his hips to mid-chest, grabs his hand and it flops lifelessly like a toy. “Hey, Genji,” his mutters, running his fingers lightly over the synthetic flesh of his neck. “You in there?”  
  
Genji’s hand comes up and slaps the front of his faceplate, dragging fingers down to the latches and fumbling. McCree uses one hand to guide Genji’s away from his face and they’re held fast in grip too weak to really hold him, but he hasn’t the heart to pull away. His other unlocks the visor from Genji’s helmet and pulls it away.  
  
Genji draws in a desperate breath, locking eyes with McCree for just a moment before shutting them tight. Tears run down his face, trickling out of the corners of his eyes. If McCree had to guess, they’re more from the strain than anything else – Genji’s absolutely in shock. His anterior vents have ceased to function properly despite his struggling and the lights along the joints of his armor flicker erratically. The only part of his body that moves at all is his flesh arm and it’s trembling, the rest of him is stone still. Time may only be on their side for a short while longer.  
  
He leans down and wipes away the tear tracks. “Come on, lightnin’ bug, you’re alright now. I’ve got ya.” Carefully, McCree tucks his arms under the cyborg’s body and hoists him up. He’s got the faceplate hooked to his belt and his eyes on the sweet, slack face below. Genji sighs somewhere in the midst of his frantic gasping, flinching with every unseen wave of pain. McCree hums something tender and familiar.  
  
Slowly his eyes open again, latching onto McCree’s with a drunken intensity and his mouth quirks in a lopsided smirk that melts his heart. His shaking arm rises up to weakly wrap around the side of McCree’s neck, resting there before his whole body goes dark and he slips back into unconsciousness.  
  
McCree sucks in a breath through his teeth. There’s still a few old Blackwatch memories rattling around in his brain. He knows the body in his arms almost as well as he knows his own, metal and all. A few emergency repairs back in the day, a couple risky field transfusions, and they were close otherwise. He pulls Genji in tight against his chest and descends into the complex.  
  
It’s about as abandoned as a military compound can be. Any reason Talon might be here is completely over his head and he’s past caring at this point – 76 can analyze that shit. The halls are bare and dust thick as snow scatters with each step. Chairs overturned, several desks broken in half, no cameras. He finds a control room that’s as good as any, with a big black table in the middle and nothing else in the room but dozens of shattered monitors. The one thing they need – light – comes in through a large corner window, overlooking an outdoor parade ground. It’s bright white from the snow.  
  
Genji slumps onto the table, head rolling to the side as McCree covers him with the serape, and takes a seat near a console that looks like it’s been burned out for years. Chin in hand, elbow on knee, he stares at Genji and draws upon his decades of tactical training to mostly slow down his own impending panic attack. He can’t just go digging around his wires and shit.  
  
Thanks to the bomb, both of their communicators are fried. Winston has their location in terms of them being in the general vicinity of a stretch of land roughly one hour outside of Berlin. Supposing they sent a recon team, they could probably surmise a good starting point from the obviously-decrepit military installation, given that they could see it through the snowstorm, and go from there.  
  
At the moment and for the near future, all they have is each other. There was a time when that would thrill McCree to death.  
  
There’s a disturbance from the table, as Genji’s labored but consistent breathing is interrupted by a cough and a stronger gasp. A full-bodied moan follows that and McCree is on his feet in an instant, coming over to get into his line of sight, make sure he knows he’s not alone. “Where-” he says before his voice drops dead, sounding as sweet as sand over glass. McCree takes his hand and holds it steady against his forehead, peering around his fingers to catch the eyes of a man who seemed to struggle to recognize him. “Jesse?” he muttered.  
  
Right now, McCree is so full of relief that all he does is hums an affirmative and moves the hand to his mouth, pressing his lips against the smooth fiber.  
  
“I cannot move,” he whispers. The fingers against his mouth twitch. “Why?”  
  
“Long story short,” McCree says, “They had a stronger weapon than we were expectin’, took out your systems.” He places Genji’s hand back down at his side and stands up, moves over to his small pile of items near the wall of consoles. “I might have somethin’ to help put you at ease while we wait for Overwatch to send in a team. Might be a while.”  
  
Genji huffs a laugh out of nowhere. “Overwatch will not send in anyone after us too quickly, Jesse, remember? Black sheep.”  
  
McCree turns slowly, rolling a small object between his hands. “What’s that?” There’s a tone in the cyborg’s voice that chills him to the core – and the antiquated sentiment from their old days.  
  
Genji’s pulling the serape off and bundling it up under his head as well as he can. “If we can get a message through to the Commander, he-” Genji pauses as he catches sight of his hand, small green lights flickering in the darkness. He releases a slow, unsteady breath. “Oh, we are no longer in Blackwatch, are we, Jesse?” He rolls his head back and shudders.  
  
McCree is back to his side in an instant, hands all over as he tries to calm him down. Jumping back and forth between distant past and present isn’t easy – McCree had done it plenty while alone on the run. Recalling the Commander especially brought on a pain something fierce. He doesn’t want to see that same pain go through Genji right now, not with everything else. They still haven’t really sat down and talked through it all and McCree desperately wants to, but right now-  
  
“We’re past that, we’re past all that,” he says. There’s a small box on the table that miss Angela had given him a _while_ ago, something for Genji in case of a _malfunction_ , she said. He didn’t like the sound of that at all, but maybe it could help him now. “I’m gonna help ya, darlin’, but ya have to calm down.” He has one hand on his face, running his thumb gently along his cheek, and one petting the swathe of flex-armor along his abdomen. It has an effect – Genji’s breathing slows again.  
  
“Where are we?” he eventually asks. Not a great sign, but he’s not freaking out anymore.  
  
“Just outside of Berlin, some compound infested with a small pack of Talon, remember the mission?”  
  
Genji hesitates, then starts to nod slowly, real honest-to-god recognition on his face. “It is Sunday.”  
  
McCree grins down at him. “And what’re we doin’ when we’re done here?”  
  
For a moment, Genji just stares at him. “The same thing we always do,” he says slowly, “We are getting drunk… and watching-”  
  
“ _Blade Runner_ ,” they say in unison.  
  
McCree drapes himself over the man, pulling him up a bit to wrap his arms around his shoulders. “Oh, honey, it’s good to have you back.”  
  
A hand comes up to return the gesture, squeezing his shoulder before pulling him back until they’re face-to-face. “I think my systems are trying to reboot themselves,” Genji says. McCree lowers him back down gently. “I cannot feel my legs, still.” He pushes back the stark black hair from his face. “Hard to breathe.”  
  
“Lemme help you with that,” McCree says, as an exaggerated sultry growl. He finds the box again, unlocks it with a complicated yet familiar string of letters and numbers the doctor gave himand pulls out two things: a small cylindrical device (weird) and a diagram of Genji (weirder). Apparently the box is reinforced against electromagnetic damage as well as anything else. Handy.  
  
When he turns back, Genji’s staring at him with his hand draped over his stomach, a picture of serenity. His mouth turns up at the edge with a smile. “What is that?”  
  
McCree chews on his lip. “It’s weird,” he says. “I think it’s a battery.” Then he holds up the paper. “And I think this tells me how to put it in you.”  
  
Genji snorts. “Wow,” he says.  
  
“Yeah,” McCree mutters, staring at the instructions. “Oh, well, you mind if I go diggin’ around in that circuit board of yours?”  
  
“Well, when you say it like that,” Genji says, relaxing. McCree pulls up a chair from the console and sits down next to him. He pops open a small chamber in his arm and pulls out a slim tool, holding it up for Genji to see.  
  
“You kept that?” Genji asks, eyes wide.  
  
McCree grins. “’Course I kept it. Just in case.”  
  
For the first year or so, Genji wouldn’t let anyone but the doctor touch him. Then, it was Reyes. Then, eventually, it was Jesse. Then it was _only_ Jesse, if it could be helped. Of course he kept it.  
  
One reason why he never let anyone else open him up was the vulnerability – unless he was completely disabled he could open up any part of himself at will. It’s only happened a couple of times, but each time he was more furious than the last, helpless as a flipped turtle. McCree can’t say what knowing Genji still trusts him like this means to him, but he supposes he can show it by not totally fucking this up.  
  
There’s an intricacy of wires inside Genji that McCree hadn’t anticipated. It used to be simpler than this. He stares into it, then at the instructions, then back.  
  
“Jesse,” Genji says, startling him out of his concentration. He’s facing the ceiling, staring up with an uneasy grimace. He’s speaking without looking at him. “I trust you, just do your best in there.”  
  
Machinery, engineering- hell, most technological focuses have always been lost on him. During the Recall he had to get Winston’s help in setting up his communicator. It was bad, the whole thing was bad. However, Genji – he reminded himself – Genji he knew no matter what body he was in.  
  
He has a few other tools, to pluck wires when the space is too small for his hands. He uses those to disconnect and reconnect a black wire, change a few ports, and disconnect one far in the back that he’s pretty certain is the cause of Genji’s body being currently stuck in a rebooting loop. So say the notes Angela left for him.  
  
Genji hisses something in Japanese and swallows hard. “Keep going,” he says when McCree pulls his hands away, “It is going to hurt, just do what you need to do.”  
  
“Sorry, sugar,” McCree says, closing the panel. “I need ya to roll over.” He lifts his dead side and Genji keeps himself propped up with his good arm, his head drooping. He looks at the instructions and pushes a hand through his hair. “This part’s gonna hurt.”  
  
There’s a spot on his back, near the base of his spine – a Break Open In Case Of Emergency port – that he digs his fingertips into until the protective casing comes off with a _snap._ Genji _tsks_ over his shoulder. “Do not break me, cowboy.”  
  
McCree sidesteps that easy joke because he’s so, so nervous. “This is the hurtin’ part,” he says instead. “Are you ready?”  
  
“Just do it,” his voice is strained, takes a shallow breath.  
  
The battery pops easily into a port like a goddamn flashlight, locks into place, and he pulls Genji back down onto his back. He looks calm, at least, if a little miserable. He goes back into the chest compartment and reconnects one quickly, shutting the panel’s cover before the rest of his body realizes what’s happening.  
  
A tremor passes through Genji from bottom to top, like his heart’s being tugged out of his chest. McCree takes his usable hand and pins it to the table with a frown. “Almost done,” he says quietly, trying to soothe the cyborg through his renewed gasping breaths and gritted-teeth suffering. He holds him still with some of his strength, ignoring the errant sparks that crawl from Genji up around his chest, burning him in a thousand tiny places.  
  
“You...” Genji says, though his voice is rougher than it was before, as though modulated through a cheese grater. McCree pulls back and looks down, thinks that it reminds him of their Blackwatch days, and stares back into red eyes. “You kept _t_ _his_ _?”_ Genji growls.  
  
“Aw, hell,” McCree says, releasing him and backing away from the table. “Darlin’ ya gotta fight this.”  
  
Genji pushes himself up to a sitting position, heaving each breath like he’s drowning. There’s a spectrum of light glowing from his waist to his neck in all the trenches of his suit – McCree considers briefly that he’s never seen a blue Genji.  
  
And, okay, was it a great idea to keep a ten-year-old battery around and use it on a whim? Probably not. Here’s what he does know: Genji was stuck in a loop that was doing more harm than good, and rattling his memories around like a snowglobe. He’s not going to sit around and watch Genji tread water while they wait for help.  
  
 _It’s only a quick fix,_ she had told him. _In the case of severe injury to his internal systems, or complete incapacitation, this will power his body long enough to sustain life-supporting functions until help arrives._ She also said it should last a few decades though the engineering wasn’t precise. It was, like Genji, kind of a new creation. He also wouldn’t put it past her to have made it with Blackwatch specifications in mind, working off the assumption that the whole institution would still be around for ‘a few decades’ at least. McCree suspects a lot of decisions were made off that assumption.  
  
Genji reaches out his hand, and like a port in a storm, McCree goes right to it. He’s pulled into a tight embrace, Genji with his arms wrapped around him, clinging to the edges of his armor like he’s sinking. McCree returns it, running his hands along his waist until he stills, red light bleeding away until he’s lined in soft white. With a heavy sigh, Genji starts to pull away, but there’s hardly a thing in the world right now that makes McCree want to let go. He climbs up onto the table and sits with crossed legs, and Genji moves his head into his lap, draping his arms over his thighs.  
  
They sit in silence for a few minutes in the hum and glow of Genji’s light, until his breathing returns to normal and he’s running the fingers of his metal arm along McCree’s leg. “I can breathe, now,” he says, his robotic voice lilting optimistically. “I still cannot move my legs.”  
  
“Yeah, that might have to wait,” McCree says. “Once we get you back to base.”  
  
“Speaking of that,” Genji mutters, reaching down to tap something in one of the compartments along his flank. “I can use my distress beacon again.”  
  
“May be a few hours before they can reach us, I reckon.”  
  
Genji gives him an affirmative hum, relaxing into him like a dead weight. “This is nice,” he says quietly. “It reminds me of when I was young.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“I was a sick child,” he says. “I would often sit with my mother like this, or one of our caretakers, or-” he pauses “-or Hanzo.”  
  
McCree feels a twinge of sympathy, a tad bit of warmth for a younger Hanzo who might have been kinder. “Is that right?” he asks with a smile. He’s still too keyed up to provide any decent conversation, but as long as Genji’s up to talking, McCree’s going to listen.  
  
Genji shifts, moving so his head rests on McCree’s thigh, better to look up at him as he speaks. “I fear, that is part of the reason our father indulged me as he did.” He looks away wistful, frowning. “Worried as he was for me, he was much harder on Hanzo because of it.” He looks back up, eyes shining with the slightest threat of tears. “Do you remember how we met, Jesse?”  
  
There’s a wobble in his voice that puts a crack in his heart. “I think I do.”  
  
“ _Jesse, this is Genji Shimada. Youngest son of Sojiro Shimada and brother to Hanzo. Heir to the Shimada clan and all of its operations, though judging by his involvement with us – not crazy about the whole thing.” Reyes had a way with introductions, pulling at his beard and lazily reading off of his datapad while the two young men stared at each other awkwardly. By the end of that statement Genji had fixed the Commander with a petulant glare. Jesse noted his grim handsomeness as quick as a bolt of lightning.  
  
_ “ _Anyways,” Reyes drawled. “You have both been briefed. Jesse will remain your main contact to us, Genji,” he said, turning his eyes to address the young lord. “Jesse,” he snapped, turning to the agent, tucking his datapad under one arm and gesturing to the distant Shimada home with the other, “If you get within a hundred feet of that fuckin’ castle, I’ll turn your ass inside-out. Am I understood?”  
  
_ _Jesse had rolled his eyes to the back of his head, coming back to attention at the last moment and giving Reyes a lazy finger gun. That seemed to satisfy him enough to wander off to other business. Why he didn’t want to deal with the Shimada informant himself was likely an issue above his pay grade, and Jesse wasn’t about to complain.  
  
_ _Genji, for all his regal masking and oozing confidence, looked a bit like a rabbit in a foxhole. He stared at Jesse, looking him up and down. Jesse saw the dark circles under his eyes, the shallow rise and fall of his chest, could see all the tells from a hundred miles off. So, he did what he does best.  
  
_ _Jesse leaned forward over the table on his left arm, putting out the Deadlock brand for his new friend to see. Genji’s gaze flicked down at it for an instant, smirking. God damn.  
  
_ “ _First time for you too?” Jesse asked.  
  
_ _Genji finally looked away, smile spreading across his face as he relaxed and – Jesse noticed in particular – took his hand off of the blade hilt at his hip.  
  
_ “You always tried to show off for me,” Genji says.  
  
McCree remembers another time they met, after Hanzo tore him to shreds. Funny how often someone becomes a new person in one life.  
  
“Uh huh,” McCree chirps back. It’s a little too much like deathbed talk to put McCree in a chatting mood, but he doesn’t want to shut him up. “Well, I had to. You were hard to impress an’ I always loved a challenge. ‘Sides that, Reyes bet twenty bucks against me havin’ any success.”  
  
He hears a _tch_ and Genji laughs. “Did he ever pay you, then?”  
  
McCree grins. “Naw, true to his style he went an’ died before he could pay up.” The grief that hits him is small but instant, and swept away with a deep breath. Genji tightens his grip on McCree’s arm and he almost feels it.  
  
There was one instance when Genji admitted his preference for the touch of his metal hand. There wasn’t anything righteously exciting about that, but it did mitigate a bit of the unease of their reunion. McCree spent around six years building up anxiety and doubt enough to hesitate when Winston mentioned Genji had also answered the call.  
  
Walking around, harboring the suspicion that Genji had thoroughly outgrown him in their time apart, he might have avoided the cyborg altogether out of some weird respect then get too close and ruin everything by not keeping his shit in check. He might have kept himself a stranger but Genji cornered him in a hallway one rainy night, about a week into this bullshit, and he challenged him to a duel on the roof of the Gibraltar watchpoint.  
  
McCree invited him back to his room literally the instant his ass hit the ground, bested.  
  
[Now, Genji might see all this go through his head. Intuition to spare, they always told him.] He wraps himself around McCree’s metal arm until he can leverage himself on one hand, wrap the other around the back of the cowboy’s neck and pull him down into a kiss – the only one they’ve shared since the mission began. [Awkward positioning aside, Genji couldn’t be bothered to recall another kiss even halfway as sweet as this one. He would never tell McCree but he knows _exactly_ what dying feels like, and now he knows _exactly_ what almost dying twice feels like.]  
  
When he pulls away McCree keeps his hands around him, anchoring him so close he can practically feel his thundering heartbeat against his own. “I missed you,” Genji says, like a breath on his lips. When he slides back down to his original position it’s with a heavy sigh. “I should not do that again until I’m fully repaired.”  
  
“Roger that,” McCree mumbles, shivering like a live wire. Genji always knew how to get the draw on him. He gets a moment of wild inspiration and pulls something from around his neck, hidden under his armor so they won’t make a sound. They’re then dangled in front of Genji’s face – silvery dog tags.  
  
Genji reaches up for them in silence, holds them close and runs his fingers over the engravings. “You kept these?” he asks quietly.  
  
He rarely ever even wore his tags properly, had resigned his inevitable death an unknown event as a given, his body recognizable enough without the tags, and had preferred it that way.  
  
When he left – which he did first, leaving McCree in the cold encroaching darkness of Overwatch’s demise – he took those tags from wherever he hid them and dropped them into his hands. Genji said little but he had to leave, had to escape the confines of Blackwatch in order to do what he needed to do. McCree could understand that. Never was much one for goodbyes either.  
  
“Why?” Genji whispers, caressing the raised letters of his own name.  
  
McCree reaches down and wraps his hands around Genji’s, feeling the letters scratched on the back, stamped in a language he never understood well enough. Never got anyone else to tell him what they meant, either. Figures every person deserved a few little secrets of their own, even if they belong to the man he eventually decided was the love of his rough life. “I missed you more,” is what he says. That’s really just the tip of the iceberg but hey, secrets and all.  
  
The chain gets wrapped around Genji’s wrist in silence and they clasp hands, metal to metal. After a long silence, Genji shifts. “Jesse,” he says. “There’s one thing I have been curious about but- I have not wanted to ask you outright.”  
  
“What’s that, sugar?”  
  
“How did you lose your arm?”  
  
It’s like someone’s poked a needle into his heart. Now it’s not even a matter of secrets, it’s just a mighty frustrating thing to talk about. While he feels no reluctance in telling Genji (of all people) as soon as he opens his mouth he knows what’s going to come out is a lie, or a vast understatement, or some excuse. Hard habit to break – on the road you’re either quick or you’re dead.  
  
Before he can say any asinine little thing there’s a burst of sound and light from the frosted windows at their back. McCree watches several figures emerge from the blast doors into the roadway, crawling cautiously across his field of vision. They’re somewhat obscured but those shapes are familiar enough to get him on his feet.  
  
“Jesse?”  
  
“Hold on, darlin’.” He’s being pretty liberal with the pet names now. “I think the cavalry just arrived.”  
  
Once he’s out of the offices he sees them. One in particular sees him immediately.  
  
“Where is he?” Hanzo snaps as soon as he’s within spitting distance. He looks a bit more vicious than usual so McCree just points over his shoulder.  
  
“Through that door, down an’ to the right, should see his glow-” McCree shuts his mouth as Hanzo brushes past him, knocking shoulders in a manner more impatient than openly hostile. McCree comes to another realization in that he’s never actually witnessed Hanzo in a worried panic before.  
  
Angela comes up to him as soon as that yellow ribbon disappears. She has her staff tucked into one elbow, tapping away at a data pad with the other hand. At the same time, she gives McCree a quick once-over, gaze falling and pausing at his eye.  
  
“God damn, he’s meaner than a junkyard dog,” he tries to deflect.  
  
“You used it,” she counters. She looks more disappointed than anything else and that makes him want to crawl out of his skin.  
  
“Had to,” he says. “Probably.” He reaches up and can feel the blood dried on his skin, flaking off as he messes with it.  
  
Angela reaches up with something out of her pack and wipes at his face, mouth stone-set in a small frown. “It looks worse than it is,” she says. “You’re lucky. It could end up doing some real damage later on- but, truthfully, I have no idea how it works.”  
  
McCree takes her hand in his and gives it a grateful pat. “That makes two of us, ma’am.”  
  
Angry Japanese trickles out of the hallway behind them. Hanzo emerges from the offices with Genji on his back, legs dangling uselessly from his arms, Genji holding tight around his shoulders. They’re arguing and Genji’s making faces at Hanzo when he’s not looking over his shoulder, but McCree could swear he’s never seen a man so pissed and relieved at the same time.  
  
Hanzo doesn’t stop as he passes them, but Genji catches his eye and smiles. “He used to carry me around like this when we were children. Don’t worry, Jesse.” [Genji might tell him later how bitterly familiar it was to have Hanzo (of all people) walk in and give a shit like that, how he looked so genuinely worried for a moment before the mask slipped back on. How hard it is now to attribute his brother to the concept of kindness, and yet.]  
  
“ _Jesse.”_ Hanzo imitates, rolling his eyes.  
  
“ _Ah, Hanzo,”_ Genji says before launching back into their tongue. The dog tags are out, dangling from Genji’s hand in Hanzo’s face. There’s something slow and teasing in his voice and all he does is coax an exaggerated groan from his elder brother. Hanzo pretends to drop him for a second, laughing as his brother clings to him in a panic. Genji yanks his ponytail.  
  
“At least they’re gettin’ along.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! please shriek @ me on tumblr (missmonomyth)


End file.
